An Unexpected Alliance
Joint Operation (3)
It was a development I simply couldn't understand. The Empire was the most powerful human nation in this world, and the princess standing before me was clearly its enemy princess. Even if the hero wasn't from the Empire, there had to be some hidden circumstances if you dug deeper. After all, it was the Empire that had completely separated the Church into two distinct entities. With that kind of status, the Empire's enemy princess could have stirred up countless troubles with just a flick of her finger. Yet here she was, standing in front of me and shedding tears while begging for help.
“Come inside first. It won't look good if someone sees us.”
“Thank you, thank you so much, Saintess.”
“Call me Lucia.”
“Pardon? Ah, yes! Lu, Lucia……”
She sniffled and sobbed, and when I handed her a handkerchief, she pressed it firmly against her eyes to wipe away the tears before blowing her nose with a loud paeaaang! I made a mental note that the handkerchief would need washing immediately, then turned my thoughts to trying to make sense of the situation. Just what could have happened to bring this imperial princess all the way here like this?
Though her appearance suggested a rather timid personality, she must have possessed at least enough backbone to stand up to me once before. “What happened? What could possibly make the Empire's princess, who lacks for nothing, come crying to someone as insignificant as me?”
In private, my efforts to project a kind and mysterious image were clearly paying off. Even if I was leveraging a certain kind of femininity, it felt rather satisfying to have things go my way.
“A-at home, if I can't find a marriage partner here, they said they'd marry me off to an old duke. And all my maids were replaced with people I don't know, sniff, sob……”
At the very least, I could tell she had an extremely timid personality. Or perhaps she had simply lived her whole life being pampered and getting whatever she wanted. Even so, as an imperial princess, she should have been thoroughly educated on how her marriage would inevitably be used for political and strategic purposes, regardless of gender.
What should I do? Should I just take her words at face value? Or should I probe a little first?
“But isn't that how most noblewomen get married?”
Of course, that was based on my modern sensibilities. In reality, it was rare for noblewomen to have any say in their marriages. The same applied to noblemen. Fundamentally, noble marriages were political tools. Most people knew this and accepted it after receiving consistent education. An imperial princess would understand this even more so.
“But they promised me! They said I could marry the hero or a foreign prince……”
Well, that made sense for a princess. Even if political marriages were the norm, an imperial princess needed a groom who could at least maintain the dignity of the imperial family. But still…
“Didn't they say they would make it possible for you?”
Wasn't this exactly the opportunity? The hero was here, the crown prince was here, and there were plenty of other outstanding men from powerful nations and families. All of them were around the same age, too. From their perspective, there was no reason to refuse marrying the princess. Some would probably even be willing to marry into her family. In other words, the princess had options—so many that they were practically laid out before her.
“Everyone's only looking at you, Lucia……”
……? What was that supposed to mean?
“Well, if a saintess appears after fifty years, of course people would want to see her.”
What was the problem with something so obvious? No matter how prominent the princess, crown prince, or powerful nobles were, it was hard to compete with the attention drawn by the first saintess in fifty years. The only one who could match that level of interest would be the hero. Did she really think that just because she was the imperial princess, she could monopolize everyone's attention? She didn't seem like the type to have such an inflated ego.
“That's not what I mean! All the men are only looking at you, Lucia! Because you're carrying that around!”
“That thing?”
“This!”
Her hands trembled as if she were afraid to touch it, yet she still reached out and gently grabbed my chest. She gathered her four fingers and pressed her thumb against the underside of my breast. The action was so unexpected that I was genuinely flustered.
“Kyaaah!”
Kyaaah?
“Ah, s-sorry……”
It was shocking that the princess was so timid she didn't even understand boundaries in this regard, but it was equally shocking that such a feminine scream had come out of my own mouth. I knew conceptually that the mind was influenced by the body just as the body was influenced by the mind, and I'd felt it somewhat since inhabiting this body, but experiencing it so intensely was still disorienting.
“Lucia? Is something wrong?”
“Ah, no, I was just talking with the princess when a bug appeared. It startled me, that's all.”
“You subdued someone who poked your side and treated yourself, yet you're scared of a bug?”
“Aren't you scared of bugs, Sieg? The big, black, shiny ones that go sasasasak and sometimes spread their wings and go parururuk when they fly?”
“……That does sound rather horrifying.”
Ziegfried, who had approached briefly at my scream, nodded as if convinced by my explanation and stepped back. As he left, he gave the princess a quick glance.
Once he was gone with what seemed like a “Have a good time,” the princess, whose gaze had been completely fixed on him, finally came to her senses.
“See, you saw it, right? Even the hero is only paying attention to you, Lucia! He didn't even look at me! What about the other men?”
“You just saw it yourself.”
“No, that's not what I mean!”
“But you made eye contact, didn't you?”
“Making eye contact doesn't count as looking! I mean, there has to be emotion in the gaze, something sticky and intense, and you have to exchange looks like that……”
“I didn't really feel anything like that. We didn't even exchange glances.”
“No, that's not what I mean!”
The conversation wasn't going anywhere, Princess.
“So you're saying that men's desire to form that kind of relationship is entirely focused on me, so it doesn't extend to Yulia?”
“Yes! That's exactly it!”
Hmm. What was I supposed to do with this girl? Her explanation was so incoherent that I doubted whether she'd actually received any education in rhetoric, but I understood what she was getting at. In short, she wanted me to share some of the attention with her.
Honestly, with her status as a princess and her appearance—which wasn't bad at all, in fact, she was quite beautiful—she could have easily taken a significant portion of the men's attention away from me if she wanted to. But with a personality like hers… It felt like watching a girl who didn't even wear much makeup monopolize the attention of her male classmates, only to follow her during lunch and discover she was buying bread at the convenience store and heading straight to the bathroom.
“Then let's do this.”
“How? How exactly?”
There was one surefire way to handle situations like this. A secret weapon that could make even the most timid person stand out.
“Stay with me. If the problem is that I'm monopolizing all the attention, then being together should solve it, right? You have just as much charm as I do, Yulia, so the attention will naturally split between us.”
It felt like just yesterday I'd been exasperated by scheming extroverts dragging along peace-seeking introverts to turn them into attached introverts, and now here I was becoming one of those extroverts myself.
“Do you really think so?”
“Have some confidence. Hmm? You're really pretty, you know? And from the perspective of harmony between the Empire and the Church, this would be incredibly meaningful. It's a golden opportunity to receive both the attention of men and political interest at the same time.”
I'd just naturally said “you” without thinking. Considering that it hadn't even come from any etiquette training I'd received, this was strangely unsettling. I'd been trying to cultivate femininity through honey traps, but even so, having it come out so naturally felt odd.
“Th-then I'll do that. Let's stay together.”
“Good thinking, Yulia. Yes, this is perfect.”
Still, what mattered right now was this side of things. I pushed aside the subtle sense of discomfort and decided to be satisfied with the result I'd obtained. No, satisfied didn't even begin to cover it. This was literally a jackpot situation. The orthodox Church's saintess and the Empire's princess forming an unusual friendship at the academy? Where else could you find such a golden opportunity? Especially now, when the orthodox Church and the imperial Church were in conflict.
Of course, honestly, this alone wouldn't be enough to stop all conflict and opposition. “Then, I'd like to apologize to Peter, the crown prince……”
“I can help with that, but who are you close with in the Empire, Yulia?”
I lacked too much information about Yulia to push anything further. It wasn't that she had no influence within the Empire, but rather that most of the Empire-related information the Church possessed was from ten years ago. The reason it was ten years ago was because that was when the orthodox Church and the imperial Church had split over the hero's recognition issue. Even so, there was still some exchange, so not all information was like that, but personal information was severely lacking. There was plenty of information that could be obtained with a little legwork, but I hadn't bothered because filling in my common sense gaps wasn't worth the time.
“My dad and mom……”
However, this princess gave an answer completely different from what I'd expected. Instead of saying which family she was close with and what their strengths were, she gave answers like “dad, mom, which older sister, which older brother.”
That said, there was at least some useful information mixed in.
“By oldest brother, do you mean His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince?”
“Yes. My oldest brother is always kind to me. If there's something I want to eat, he always brings it, and if there's something I want to have, he always finds it and brings it.”
Whether they were truly close or there were other reasons remained to be seen, but based on her words alone, their relationship seemed quite warm on a personal level, even if not politically. The imperial crown prince was thirty-one years old, if I remembered correctly. That much information was practically public knowledge, even if it was about the imperial family, so I was probably not too far off. A fifteen-year-younger little sister would naturally seem cute to him. Of course, that was only possible when the crown prince himself had some leeway, but even now, he probably wasn't completely without it.
“Then, could you help me with a few things now that we're close like this? This would be quite beneficial for you too, Yulia.”
“What kind of things?”
The red-haired princess with the bun hairstyle blinked innocently as she asked. I took her hand and looked straight into her face, which was turning as red as her hair, and into her trembling golden eyes, before giving her a sincere smile.
“I'll make you, Yulia, into everyone's lover. To the point where no one who sees you can help but fall for you.”
This girl, who was already quite beautiful and had distinctive features, swallowed dryly at my words, but she couldn't tear her gaze away from mine.